First Build - IC-1 Custom 7 String

Hello everyone,

Been patiently waiting on my custom kit since December, thought I'd come say hello and start my build diary now.

I'm building a 7 String Iceman style kit, 27" scale, black hardware, tune-o-matic bridge.

I have always loved the Iceman shape and thought that a 7 string would be quite unique.

My plan is to stain the front of the body vintage amber to achieve a Korina style look, and stain the back a darker red/brown for a bit of contrast.

Anyway, can't wait to get stuck in :D
-Chris

Hi Chris,
welcome and good luck with your build.
Colour scheme sounds good. What are you going to use for your stains?

Thanks Trev,

I have a "vintage amber" stain from Colortone that looks to be exactly what im after, and for the back I found a Maple coloured stain from Bunnings that looks ok. I'll get some test wood before I do the real thing, just to be safe.

Welcome Chris, good luck with the build.

rob

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Originally Posted by project_chris

Thanks Trev,

I have a "vintage amber" stain from Colortone that looks to be exactly what im after, and for the back I found a Maple coloured stain from Bunnings that looks ok. I'll get some test wood before I do the real thing, just to be safe.

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Always a great idea to test stains and especially clear finishes to see if they react. Good luck.

Scheduled for delivery today or tomorrow. Hopefully can start sanding by the weekend. I'm off to Adelaide next week so really hoping it arrives before then.

Kit arrived yesterday, initial thoughts are i'm very happy with how it looks. However I noticed that the shop forgot to do the routing for the pickup selector switch, and also didn't include the switch with my kit. I contacted Ben from the custom shop and he is sending me a switch in the mail. Not a big deal, I wanted to change the location of the selector anyway.

Attachment 40053

It stands up by itself too :cool:
Apologies for poor lighting in the second pic.

Attachment 40052

Nice. The spalted maple looks good. Shame about the switch.

Sick! Great looking kit, make sure you do a gum turps/solvent wipe down to find any dang pesky glue spots in your veneer before you start staining.
looking forward to see how this rolls out👍🏾

I have begun sanding today, the amount of contours in the body is a pain. I am very careful not to go anywhere near the veneer as well. I will make another pass over with 400 grit tomorrow morning.

I am waiting for some supplies in the mail so that will have to hold me over until I get back from Adelaide on the 19th.

Fretboard is taped up ready for fretwork and nut filing for when I get back, and then I can start staining.

Attachment 40075

I have a question about sanding if anyone could help me out:

The Pit Bull instruction manual PDF on the website says not to sand beyond 220 grit, I have sanded to a very smooth 400 grit, it feels really nice but now im worried the stain won't take evenly.

Also there still seems to be some machine marks on the edge of the body, what's the best way I can get rid of these?

Attachment 40094

Can anyone lend some advice?

Sand some more. And then when you're done, sand some more...

You might need to go back down to 120, then back up the grains to work through the scratching.

Regarding the staining, 400 is generally considered too fine for the stain to take evenly. It's probably ok for the veneer, but for the body I'd go back down the grit.

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Thanks Dozy, I thought as much!

Just got back from my trip away, so can continue with this build finally.

I did some fret work last night, they needed quite a bit of levelling, but now it looks really nice with a bit of lemon oil.

At some point I will have to drill through the body to mount the 3 way selector, any tips on drilling through the body without cracking the veneer?

I'd use a sharp forstner bit in an electric drill and drill in slowly from the top. Don't use too slow a speed or a manual drill, as unless the drill bit is razor sharp, the higher speed of an electric drill compensates for slightly dull blades.

You can also mark the hole diameter first, by partially using the forstner bit to drill the centre of the hole and then just score the hole outline, then score around that with a sharp blade (preferably a scalpel as it's got a thin pointy blade that will follow the outline well) until you are through the veneer layer. You can always put tape over the area as well, which helps keep the surface together (nothing too sticky or the tape could pull fibres from the end of the hole away with it).

The knurled mounting nut will cover up the very edges of the hole, so small imperfections will be hidden.

Thanks Simon, I have taped up the area in any case. Do you reckon a spade bit would work?

Having looked at a couple of videos on the subject, you can do, provided its in an electric drill at a high speed. I’d test it out on some soft scrap wood first to see what you think.

This video shows the pitfalls of modern bit types, now designed for use in electric drills, in hand tools.

http://youtu.be/RXIz2tk9fw8

(spade bits start at around 4.30)

Ok so after a bit of a hiatus, I have now drilled out the hole where my selector switch will go, just below the volume knob.

I also started staining...with mixed results...

I didn't realise that my stain was pre-mixed by the seller so my initial attempts dried really really light. Luckily I only mixed up a small amount to start with (phew!) but this caused me to waste about 15-20ml of my 50ml bottle of vintage amber :(

Once I realised this I finished up the whole body with the rest of the stain, and it came out exactly what I was going for (despite the missed glue spot on the body).

Few piccies: https://imgur.com/a/6GRNF8U

I'm kinda digging the entire body being one colour now that I look at it, but I may change my mind again :D

We are about to head into a 3-day lockdown in WA so only had time to rush out to Bunnings to buy a finishing oil and all they had in stock was raw linseed oil. :rolleyes:

I have heard mixed results on using this for guitars - can anyone attest to this? I may end up returning the unopened bottle after weekend...

Shame about that glue area.

Raw linseed oil takes ages (months and months) to dry fully. Boiled linseed oil is a main constituent of things like TruOil and polymerises to a hard finish fairly quickly. So avoid raw linseed oil. It has its place, but on a guitar as a protective finish is not one of them.

Thanks Simon, yeah that glue spot is annoying. But im going to wear it as a badge of honour to honour my first build.

Good point about the linseed, it has the smell of one of my old (very old) cricket bats, very nostalgic.

I stained the back of the guitar now and successfully achieved my two-tone look I was after. Unfortunately had some red stain bleed through the veneer, oh well.

https://imgur.com/a/FgrVNc1

I have started finishing the body with boiled linseed oil, and have done a bit of wet sanding too. It's coming up really nice, im quite amazing at how much of a difference wet-sanding .

Should I wet sand the top? (veneer) or leave it? I don't want to risk sanding through it.

I also realised that my kit came with a tone pot instead of a volume pot, so Adam is sending me out one, glad I noticed before I wired it up.

The bleed is minimal and hardly noticeable. It's one of those things that you know about and nobody else will notice. Without binding, it's very hard to stop something like that happening, and with binding, you have the problem of binding cracks taking up stain. Hard to win!

You're basically applying enough layers of finish to build up a thickness deep enough to sand it back level and then polish, whilst leaving enough thickness of finish to protect the body.

Intermediate sanding is only really about removing noticeable dust specs and trapped hairs from the finish as you go. If you haven't got dust or hair issues, then personally I see no need to sand at all as you'll build up the thickness quicker and you can do almost all the levelling at the final stages.

If the body wasn't flat before starting the finish, then lightly sanding with a hard flat block should rough up the high areas and show the dips as still glossy. You'll almost always get small dips (which I wouldn't worry about until you've got lots of layers on), but if there are any large low areas, you might want to spend some time just applying finish in those layers to fill things up.

Unless the linseed oil is very highly thinned (so the resulting layer is much thinner than normal), it will be too viscous to settle just in the dips and level things out automatically, and it will just follow the surface contours. So it's often quicker to just get as much depth as you can before sanding it all back flat with a reasonably fine grit, say P600, before working up through the finer grits and then polishing.

Yeah it took me a while to notice the stain leak. Looks pretty great overall.

And if you start wet sanding, then I'd ensure you've got a few coats of oil on the inside of the potentiometer and switch holes, and fill the post holes up with something like plasticine. Very easy for water to get into the wood in those areas, it then swells up and cracks the finish. The swelling should go once it dries, but the cracks won't.

Looking good! Loving that neck colour.

Thanks for the comments guys, really appreciate the feedback!

Big fan of your IC build Graham, looks killer. :cool:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Unless the linseed oil is very highly thinned (so the resulting layer is much thinner than normal), it will be too viscous to settle just in the dips and level things out automatically, and it will just follow the surface contours. So it's often quicker to just get as much depth as you can before sanding it all back flat with a reasonably fine grit, say P600, before working up through the finer grits and then polishing.

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Cheers Simon i'll keep building up layers of BLO then

If you do get dust or hairs stuck in the finish, then you do need to remove them, which hopefully a light sand will do. So don't be afraid to do that when necessary. Otherwise build up as necessary.

If you do sand automatically every six coats or so, then you'll still get there, but it may take longer to build up the thickness. As it's almost impossible to measure the depth of the coats on the guitar without cutting a slice through the surface, the less you sand back in the meantime, the better an idea you have of how thick the finish is.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by project_chris

Thanks for the comments guys, really appreciate the feedback!

Big fan of your IC build Graham, looks killer. :cool:

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Cheers Chris!

Been a while since I posted an update here, been busy with some general life stuff.

The body and neck are finished now, I ended up applying a couple very thin coats of clear on the top of the body and headstock to achieve the correct amount of sheen I was after. I finished wiring everything and it all makes the correct noises when tapped with a screwdriver, awesome.

Im very please with how the spalted maple top looks, perfect colour I was after and I love being able to feel the wood grain.

https://imgur.com/a/IMtKGS1

I needed to do a bit of work on the nut though, so im glad I have a spare set of Ernie Ball strings for when im ready to play it.

This afternoon I will be installing the rest of the hardware (as well as grounding the bridge), installing the neck and tuners.

Looks very nice indeed.

Your cavity shielding needs a tiny bit more work though. It's far more effective if you fully enclose the cavity with grounded shielding, which means putting tape on the underside of the cavity cover and running the cavity tape up over and around the recess for the cover, so that the cover copper is grounded by its touching the copper on the recess on the cavity.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Your cavity shielding needs a tiny bit more work though. It's far more effective if you fully enclose the cavity with grounded shielding, which means putting tape on the underside of the cavity cover and running the cavity tape up over and around the recess for the cover, so that the cover copper is grounded by its touching the copper on the recess on the cavity.

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Ah I wish I saw this comment before I finished stringing up, I didn't notice any interference when I played it, but I do have a noise gate pedal. At least if I notice anything further down the track adding the shielding tape isn't an issue.

I'll be posting images of the finished product later today!

You won’t pick up much interference at all from the control cavity in most situations, but you can find there are some electrically noisy locations where shielding the cavity does quieten things down. You’ll be playing with high gain most of the time, which will magnify any hum, but your noise gate will mask any of that.

I just thought as you’d gone to the trouble of lining the cavity, you might as well get the full benefit from it with a little extra tape. You do need to fully cover the underside of the lid, but you only need run some tape up to one of the screw locations if you want, rather than all the way around the rebate. The screw will ensure the copper is held together well enough for good electrical continuity.

Here it is!

Attachment 40461

Attachment 40460

Very happy with how this has turned out, the slight sheen on the top is exactly what I was after.

Getting used to playing a 7 again (after about 4 years of not owning one) is taking longer than I anticipated.

There are still a few tweaks I want to make before I am fully satisfied but nothing a good setup won't fix.

Now to decide on a name for this guy... i'm thinking either IC-277 (7 strings, 27" scale length). I might end up 3D printing a logo and sticking it on the headstock at a later stage.

I plan on taking some more/better photos on the weekend when the sun is out. But for now, I desperately need to practice ;)

It does look superb.

She looks great. Well done. The colours look great.

That looks amazing. I would be very pleased with that. :)